A force/torque sensor-based technique for robot harvesting of fruits and vegetables

Abstract

In the harvest of many fruits and vegetables, it is important to cut the peduncle at a certain length, and not just to pull the fruit away, because this may damage the plant or the fruit during the harvest. In this paper, a method for the detection of the peduncle of close-to-spherical fruits and vegetables in robot harvesting is presented. An experimental set-up, consisting of a compliant three-finger hand, a 6-axis force/torque sensor and a PUMA 560 robot arm is described, and an implementation of the method is shown.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>